CONVIV CON 2026 Review

How can we strengthen a convivial future for humans and more-than-humans?

This question brought together around 20 international experts from the natural and social sciences, planning, design, and the arts, alongside 20 more-than-human species, including mice, doves, foxes, owls, and fishes, represented by students from TU Wien.

In recent years, the idea of conviviality has gained increasing attention across diverse fields, from ecology, anthropology, and philosophy to art, design, and planning. Yet the concept often remains abstract. What does conviviality mean in practice? How can it be cultivated, negotiated, or even designed?

Over the course of two days, the Ankerbrotfabrik in Vienna became an experimental space for thinking, discussing, and working on convivial practices and realities. The workshop aimed to create a shared forum in which different forms of knowledge and practice could meet, interact, and challenge one another.

At the heart of the exchange was a shared understanding: just and sustainable coexistence between humans and other living beings does not emerge automatically. It requires new forms of listening, new formats of negotiation and conflict resolution, new planning tools, and new institutional priorities and governance frameworks. Working in four thematic groups, participants explored conviviality not only as a concept, but through concrete questions of method, process, conflict, institutions, and spatial design.

The first thematic strand focused on the development of governance frameworks. Participants discussed how other living beings might be addressed within planning and decision-making processes not merely as objects of protection, but as subjects with their own needs and claims. Such a shift, they argued, requires new procedures of assessment, evaluation, management, and long-term responsibility from a more-than-human perspective.

The second strand addressed the role of conflict in convivial relations. Rather than treating conflict as a breakdown, participants approached multispecies conflict as a potential starting point for transformation. Conviviality, in this sense, does not imply harmony, but the capacity to recognize tensions, assume responsibility, and work constructively with disagreement and conflicting needs.

The third strand explored how conviviality can be embedded in institutions and administrative structures. Participants emphasized the need to systematically integrate more-than-human perspectives into planning cultures and governance processes, strengthening their presence within public decision-making.

The fourth strand examined the spatial dimension of conviviality in urban contexts. Participants highlighted the need to move beyond static planning models toward more open-ended future scenarios and rewilding approaches. In this view, planning can support adaptive and shared habitats rather than fixed spatial ideals.

Across all four themes, ConvivCON made clear that conviviality is never simply given. It does not arise automatically from shared values or ethical principles alone. Rather, it emerges through negotiation, experimentation, and the continuous adjustment of relationships. The workshop underscored the importance of developing concrete formats, transforming institutions, and rethinking planning and design through multispecies perspectives.

By focusing on the situations in which different forms of life meet — in cities, landscapes, infrastructures, institutions, and everyday interactions — the workshop asked how these encounters might be shaped more carefully, justly, and imaginatively. Conviviality, then, is not a finished condition, but an ongoing practice: something that must continually be negotiated and sustained.

Hosts
Susann Ahn & Thomas E. Hauck

Moderation
Gunnar Grandel, Kollektiv Raumstation

Co-Moderation
Katrin Hagen, Lars Hopstock, Thomas E. Hauck, Susann Ahn, Marcello Sagot-Better, Stefanie Tischberger, Nikola Pohl

Student supervision:
Arne Markuske

Guests:
Fahim Amir, Anniken Førde, Pia Fricker, Tom Fry, Wolfgang Gerlich, Michael Hensel, Elisa Kornherr, Eva Meijer, Erik Meinharter, Martin Prominski, Marianna Sonneck, Georg Reinhardt, Ute Schneider, Henrik Schultz, Piet Sellke, Assaf Shwartz, Jonathon Turnbull, Annette Voigt, Wolfgang W. Weisser

Film
OFFscreen Media

Foto
Magdalena Pekala, Dominik Schmidt

Students
Jonghyun Baek, Til Bonhage, Tilo Braun, Maria Breinstampf, Anastazja Cwiertniewicz, Kristina Hysaj, María Kaiser Mateo-Sagasta, Pia Marie Larcher, Sara Langher, Agnese Landolfo, Michelle Muhr, Yara Omar, Katharina Marie Reiter, Jiazhen Teng, Cornelia Uher, Violeta Urquijo Kastner, Lenia Weiler, Xinyi Yang, Marija Zdravkovska, Yunhan Zhang

Organization
Edda Böhm, Sarita Holl, Annalisa Mauri, Tuuli Myllynen, Dominik Schmidt, Lotta Steger

Location
Ankerbrotfabrik, Vienna, Austria

Public Debate
12 March 2026, 18:00–19:30